All
songs recorded live in Hartlepool in 1977 and 1980 and written, composed and arranged by Mike
Absalom in the 1970's.

Copyright Mike
Absalom.

Cover illustration by Cornelia
Weinmann.

1977 recording by Dave Wilkins, 1980 recording by Graham Whitley

Live in Hartlepool was recorded
at
The Nursery Folk Club and the Folk Song Club in Hartlepool. At the time Mike was best known for
his rambunctious stage shows in theatres before large student audiences.
His college shows consisted of convoluted pun-filled scripted plots,
interspersed with his own songs and poems, and featured lots of
(primitive) technical gadgetry, including pre-recorded sound effect
clips, loud gunpowder detonations and exploding speaker cabinets,
together with handfuls of supplementary audience pleasers in the form of
Sunday (and Monday to Saturday) joints tossed liberally into the crowd.
On these two CDs, however, are the only surviving recordings from that
period, as far as we are aware, of Mike playing in a small and intimate
setting to a folk club audience. He wraps his songs in spontaneous
patter, exchanges repartee with hecklers and Hartlepool wits, and is
clearly so completely at ease that he feels free to brandish a monkey on
a gallows, re-write verses as he goes along and launch into new untried
compositions at will as his breakneck presentation unravels. The 1980
performance is probably Mikeís last performance in Britain before he
left to live in Canada in June of that year.